Firmware update brings 'Power Nap' to Retina MacBook Pro

Apple on Friday rolled out a firmware update for the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display enabling Mountain Lion's new Power Nap feature two days following the new operating system's release.

The update, titled "MacBook Pro Retina SMC Update," comes on the heels of a Thursday firmware release which brought the same functionality to mid-2011 MacBook Airs.

As MacRumors reports, the system management controller (SMC) update enables the new Power Nap feature that comes with Mountain Lion.

Limited to newer MacBook Air models and the MacBook Pro with Retina display, Power Nap keeps Macs up to date and allows for the automatic backup of data while the machine is sleeping. The automatic data-refreshing service, which handles Time Machine and iCloud syncing, is both silent and power-efficient.

From the release notes:

This update fixes several sleep/wake issues to improve the stability of MacBook Pro with Retina display (Mid 2012) computers and is recommended for all users running OS X v10.7.4. It also enables Power Nap support for users running OS X v10.8 or later.

The update can be found in the Mac App Strore while settings for Power Nap reside in the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences.

I think that this is an awesome update. I cannot wait to just plug my computer in and get emails and other updates. I'm confused as to why it isn't done when on battery though. Hmmm. Maybe they could update to do that sometime?

I think that this is an awesome update. I cannot wait to just plug my computer in and get emails and other updates. I'm confused as to why it isn't done when on battery though. Hmmm. Maybe they could update to do that sometime?

I'm not sure I understand your question. The only thing Power Nap doesn't do on battery is the Time Machine Backups. Could they enable this later? Sure, but it isn't likely they will. If they haven't enabled it this time around it is probably because their tests revealed it would consume too much power. Imagine if you just did a huge update spanning several GBs, Time Machine could take hours (depending on your Wifi connection) and so you would wake up with a pretty dead battery. Best to just leave that one out and give everything else, as they did. Or are you asking why Power Nap isn't enabled on battery power by default? My guess there is they would want people to realize this uses of a little bit of extra battery power. But no big deal, you simply enable it once and it's good.

I think the difference between power nap and "closing the lid and updating" is that power nap will actually put the computer to sleep and still update/backup. Practically every laptop can update with the lid closed (as long as you set it to 'do nothing' instead of sleep or hibernate). The computer just stays on all night and can update or backup. Power nap seems to be able to do more